


Drowning

by kiiouex



Series: dead leaves in the water [2]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Ambiguous Character Death, Gen, Mentions / Discussion of death, POV Second Person, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 10:31:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4176507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wirt made a deal with the Beast, and Greg got to go home alone. But it's hard being the only one to understand that Wirt's not dead - he's just at the bottom of the river.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drowning

You spend the next few months sticking your head in the bath and full sinks, buckets of water and puddles, but it never works. Always, the water muffles all sounds and it feels hard to keep your eyes open. There's none of the clarity you had at the bottom of the river and you know you'll never reach him from your bathroom.

You'd go back to the river to try, but when your father asked why and your stepmother suggested 'closure', you told them both that you wanted to lie at the bottom to see how Wirt was. Your father forbade you with a heavy hand on your shoulder and a strange look in his eye. Your stepmother shook and cried.

The next time you ask to go to the river, there's yelling. You don't ask a third time.

They’d let you stay home from school a while, which was fun, but you go back eventually. Everyone there is nicer to you, which you like, and you think you make a lot of friends for all that they keep asking how you feel, and saying they're sorry about Wirt. They go quiet and funny when you ask _why_ they're sorry about Wirt. Some of them try to tell you he's dead. Some of them go all gentle when you tell them he's not.

You try telling everyone he's not. He's trapped in a bad place with a bad creature, and he needs help, but it seems that everyone else gave up on him immediately and you can't stand it. You try to explain, over and over, that Wirt is still alive. He saved you by staying, like a hero! You thought it might make his mother feel better to know. It does not.

Once, you feel desperate, sick of being told you don't understand. You argue with your stepmother. You don't stop when she starts crying. It's the closest your father has ever come to hitting you, and you pass a long night in your room. You cry a little yourself, confused and upset and missing Wirt. If he came back people would stop calling you a liar. Your stepmother doesn’t talk to you the next morning, and your father tells you, gentle but firm, that you need to stop saying ‘that kind of thing’.  

You get quiet after that. You think maybe you told too many rock facts and that's why no one believes you now. But it’s frustrating, being misunderstood over and over. You wonder if this is how Wirt felt, why he was always sulky and lonely. He’d said people didn’t ‘get’ him. Maybe they don’t ‘get’ you either.

The weird thing is, it's like people were expecting you to get quiet. They get gentle and nice and give you sweets and tell you they're sorry and that they're 'glad you accepted it.' Your stepmother starts hugging you a lot. Once, she tells you that she's glad that at least you're okay and it feels so wrong not to say that it’s thanks to Wirt. But you don’t.

Time passes. People stop paying so much attention to you. No one at school talks about Wirt anymore, except Sarah. She sits and talks with you sometimes. She said she liked the tape a lot. She cried, but you’re getting used to crying people.

Your father and stepmother still don't want you going to the river but you get bigger and go on your own when you’re meant to be at marching band practice. You don't get into the water. You sing to it instead, long songs you make up as you watch the current and imagine Wirt in the dark of the Unknown underneath.

Instead of singing, you sometimes think about what went wrong. You should have had a map, you think. Or a compass. If you hadn't gotten so lost, Wirt wouldn't have gotten so mad. If you hadn't gotten lost, you could have both gone home together. You think about that long night in the snow and the way the chill had crept deep into your bones. You think about your travels, how reliant on others you both were, how you couldn’t even get food to eat on your own.  

You buy a compass, a camping stove, a set of books on camping and hiking and outdoors survival.

Your father offers to go camping with you, and you have a series of wonderful weekends filled with marshmallows and happy nonsense songs. But you're still trying to learn. Your stepmother never comes camping, but she sends nice food along with you. She smiles more. She hasn't been into Wirt's room for a long time.

You have, though. You rummage through his things at least once a week, playing his music and singing along, reading his poetry even though you still don't quite get it. You find a long series of letters dedicated to Sarah and think briefly about giving them to her, but you don't. She’s cried enough. People still don't like the way you talk about Wirt, people want to ‘move on’, want to forget he existed.

Besides, he didn't like you trying to give things to people for him. You learned that.

You suffer through years of being the only one to know he's alive. You don't want to make anyone cry anymore, and you keep your words to yourself even though it feels like you’re choking on them. But you never stopped thinking about him, and you never stopped imagining him bound to the beast and the lantern, and you've been visiting the river after school every day since people stopped worrying about you doing it.

You've gained quite a collection of camping equipment from years of trips with your father. You've done a few trips on your own too, and you've learned how to last, how to keep yourself warm and fed and alive.

You're sick of no one believing that Wirt is still alive. You’re sick of the truth trapped on your tongue. You understand what he did for you. His mother misses him. You want to bring him back. Everyone will be so pleased to see him again.

You think for a long time about whether or not you should leave a note, because you know from last time that not even a day will pass. And you know you'll be back soon. But you don't want anyone to worry, so you scribble a note and pack all your gear and you leave.

The paper you left reads, 'I've gone to get Wirt!' You drew the rock-fact rock’s face, cute and happy.

The river is cold, and the water is deep, and you toe the edge for a minute, peering down into the water and imagining what it will feel like again. Looking at it like this, you can’t imagine how you could have thought to reach the Unknown by sticking your head in the bath. That water was clear; this is dark and murky, littered with leaves. You’re sure the Unknown is in the darkness on the riverbed.  

You’ve been waiting a long time for this trip. Wirt saved you; you can finally save him.

And you go to lie at the bottom of the river.

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be a tiny sequel to Lambent Heart, but I like the ambiguity if it stands on it's own. Thanks to telekinesiskid for beta reading, thank you for reading, let me know if you have any comments or criticisms =)


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